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Although its football team is assured of a losing season for the fourth year in a row and seventh time in nine years and students have been out of school all week for the Thanksgiving holiday, CSU officials don’t feel the need to offer any discounted tickets for the final game of the season.

So once again there will be twice as many empty seats as occupied ones at 5 p.m. Saturday at 32,500-seat Hughes Stadium, where the Rams (3-8, 2-5 Mountain West Conference) will face New Mexico (4-8, 1-6).

Jason Layton, Colorado State University’s senior associate athletic director for sales and marketing, said Wednesday he’s expecting a crowd slightly larger than the official count of 13,887 for a Nov. 10 win over UNLV 33-11. Although that many tickets had been distributed, only about 6,000 fans actually braved the cold and light snowfall that night to attend the game.

Weather forecasts for Saturday call for a high in the low 60s and an overnight low in the mid-30s, so game-time temperatures should range from the mid-50s to mid-40s.

“It’s really a shame that people can’t see through the noise of the record in the last three, four years and recognize the fact that they’re getting to see the start of something great,” athletic director Jack Graham said. “… There’s no better game-day experience than a full stadium, and we don’t have that right now; we’re all going to experience that soon. It’s going to take us a couple years to turn that aircraft carrier around. Discounting tickets is not going to solve that problem.”

Discounting tickets, Graham said, would dilute the value of season tickets purchased by more than 5,300 fans and Ram Club members. With ticket prices of $30 for seats in the north end zone and $35 in sideline seating areas, Graham said tickets already are a bargain. Students get their tickets for free but have to either pick them up on campus during the week prior to the game or use the print-at-home option with a valid student number at CSURams.com.

The Rams have gone 3-9 the past three seasons and last had a winning record in 2008, when they won the New Mexico Bowl at the end of the year to finish 7-6. CSU hasn’t won a conference title since 2002.

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As the records have declined, so has the attendance. The Rams were averaging 30,462 fans a game in 2002 and 30,631 in 2003 but this year need at least 16,800 to show up Saturday to keep the per-game average, now at 20,643, from dropping below 20,000 for the first time since 1992.

“If instead of going into this game 3-8, we were 8-3 and playing for a conference championship, we’d have 35,000, 40,000 people showing up out there,” Graham said.

Fan reaction to the 5 p.m. starts this year has been mixed. Some have said in emails and Facebook comments on the Coloradoan’s website that they like the later start times, since it allows them to participate in other activities earlier in the day before coming to games. Others have said it’s simply too cold in Colorado to be playing night games in late October and November.

Attendance figures seem to support that concern. Although CSU drew 23,567 and 23,374 for its two home games in September and a season-most 25,814 for an Oct. 6 homecoming game, attendance for an Oct. 27 game against Hawaii was listed at 16,573.

The start times, Layton said, are one of many factors that will be examined after the season as the athletic department seeks ways to improve the game-day experience and fill more seats next fall. Layton was hired in mid-August and began work the day before the season opener.

“Winning’s always going to help, but I don’t know that it’s the silver bullet that’s going to definitely sell out every game,” said Layton, who spent 13 years in marketing and sales positions with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “I think you can look nationwide, and attendance to different levels has gone down a little bit, so you kind of have to find ways to add value, make the game-day experience a good one.

“Obviously, winning’s going to help, and then we just have to do our part and make sure we’re out there doing our best to market it.”